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I 



I I 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 









A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 



BY 

WILLIAM McFEE 




GARDEN CITY NEW YORK 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
1920 



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DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

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INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 

COPYRIGHT, IQI7, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY 



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©CU604426 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 



SIX-HOUR 
SHIFT 



I 



I LIE still, with eyes closed, for a 
few moments before rising, 
listening to the drumming of the 
rain on the deck overhead, and the 
gurgle of the scupper-pipes outside 
in the alleyway. I sort out drowsily 
the familiar vibrations: the faint, 
delicate rhythm of the dynamo, the 
hammer of a pump, the leisurely 
rumble and hiss of the refrigerator. 
Suddenly a hideous jar close at hand: 
the Fourth Engineer is making tea in 
the galley, and has dropped the 
poker. I look sideways at my watch. 
It is now five minutes to two. I 
decide to get up and dress. 

I reflect on the fact that to-day is 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

the anniversary of our departure 
from a home port. For a year, with 
but one or two days of rest, we have 
been dressing at five minutes to two. 
For a year the Armee d'Orient has 
been fed with frozen meat from our 
insulated holds. I recall a sentence 
in a recent letter from an officer on 
the Western front. It seems to put 
the matter succinctly. "War," he 
says, "is like trade; only indirectly in- 
teresting.' ' And again, lower down, 
he remarks, "It isn't the horror of 
war that makes a man tired, or even 
the danger and bloodshed; it is the 
infernal monotony of it." 

So I suppose we have no corner in 
monotony! I finish dressing (it is 
now five minutes past two, but no 
matter), and go into the mess-room 
for a cup of tea. The Fourth Engi- 
neer is there, also my colleague whom 
I am relieving, and the Third Officer 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

in pajamas. This last person is 
suffering from insomnia, which is 
not surprising, since he drinks strong 
tea at 10:30 p. m. He is now drink- 
ing strong tea at 2 a. m., on the 
principle of poison counteracting poi- 
son, I suppose. Anyhow, he does 
nothing all day, so it doesn't matter. 
The Fourth Engineer is a hospit- 
able soul and makes me toast. He 
is on duty all night in the main 
engine-room. He is a lanky, im- 
mature, good-tempered youth, with 
nice eyes. He knows I like toast. 
In return, I am looking the other 
way when the cook gives him a 
pocketful of eggs out of the cold- 
storage rooms. I like him. He 
laughs easily and bears no malice. 
Like most East Anglians, he has a 
subtle refinement of mind that will 
stand him in good stead through life. 
Among the dour north countrymen 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

who throng the ship, he is almost 
feminine. 

While I eat my toast, I listen to 
their conversation. It does not 
amount to much. How could it? 
We have been together a year. We 
are, occasionally, rather tired of each 
other. We are each painfully con- 
scious of the other's faults. Most 
subjects of which we know anything 
have been bled white of all interest. 
There are neither mysteries to attract 
nor revelations to anticipate. "The 
End of the War" and "When the 
Ship will go Home " are taboo. Most 
of us take refuge in light badinage. 
Others, like the Third Officer and his 
colleagues, play bridge for three hours 
every night. Some study languages 
and musical instruments; but there 
are not many of these. Some drink 
secretly, and are reported later as 
" sick. ' ' Most of us, however, do sim- 
6 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

ply nothing. We sit, or stand, or walk 
or lie, with one dull thought in our 
minds, one vague image before our eyes 
— the thought, the image, of Release. 
It is an unusual state of mind. I 
had almost written "a curious psy- 
chological phenomenon," but I am 
anxious to make the reader under- 
stand, and plain words are best. It 
is, I say, an unusual state of mind. 
From the Commander to the scullion, 
from the Chief Engineer to the coal- 
passer, we have all gradually ar- 
rived at a mood which is all the more 
passionate because it is inarticulate. 
With every other outlet dammed, our 
whole spiritual life is forced along one 
narrow channel of intense desire. We 
want to go home. It sounds childish, 
but that is because the reader does 
not understand. When he has read 
through this essay, I hope he will 
understand. I mean him to. 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

I drink my tea and eat my toast, 
and having given Thomas a saucer of 
milk, I go on duty. Thomas is a 
large black cat, who shares my vigil. 
Allons done! 

I go aft to the refrigerating-room 
along a covered alleyway, which none 
the less leaks; and Thomas, who 
follows, makes little runs to avoid the 
drips. It is raining as it can rain 
only in the Balkans. There is some- 
thing Scottish about this rain, some- 
thing dour, persistent, and irritating; 
and this old obsolete banana boat, 
converted into a cold-storage, leaks 
in every seam of her boat-deck, 
which is all warped by the blazing 
suns of a Balkan summer. We skip 
in, Thomas and I, in where there is 
light and warmth and comfortable 
noises, and, in our various fashions, 
carry on. 

It is no part of these reflections to 
8 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

treat of refrigeration. That, being 
part of modern war, is uninteresting. 
My oiler, a faded Irishman with a bad 
leg, does most of the work. I note 
the log on the desk, thumb the com- 
pressor rods, take a few thermometer 
readings, feel the crank bearings of 
the engine, and feel bored. Thomas, 
after watching a couple of cock- 
roaches who persist in risking their 
lives along the edge of the evapo- 
rator-casing, settles down to snooze on 
the vise-bench. For a time I envy 
him. I want to sleep again myself. 
I sit down near the desk, and, 
sharply alert as to the machine, I 
permit the rest of me, my soul and 
body let us say, to take forty winks. 
I leave the explanation to competent 
psychologists. It can be done. I 
need no Psychical Research Society 
to tell me that my soul and my 
intellect are differentiate entities. I 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

know it, because I have kept six-hour 
watches, because I have been on 
night duty, because — because of 
many private reasons, of which it is 
not seemly that I should speak. 
Suffice it. 

For an hour I sit with folded arms, 
while the machine pursues its 
leisurely never-ending race; while the 
brine-pump lifts first one leg and 
then the other, gingerly, as though in 
deep snow; while the electric fans 
revolve noiselessly in their corners; 
while the faded Irishman moves un- 
easily from side to side as he ministers 
to the needs of the machine. Sub- 
consciously I am aware of all that 
goes on. So much for the experience 
and flair born of a dozen years at sea. 

And, to tell the truth, this is the 
most hopeless time of the day. I 
once saw a picture, well known, no 
doubt: A Hopeless Dawn. My ex- 

10 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

perience is, that all dawns are hope- 
less, to those who have to witness 
them. The legend of the early palae- 
olithic ancestor who spent a night of 
terror after seeing the sun sink out of 
sight, and who leaped for joy at the 
dawning, is too thin. He is no 
ancestor of mine. For me the peri- 
od comprised between the hour of 
two and four is one of unrelieved 
vacuity. The minutes, the very 
seconds, seem to deliberate. When, 
after what seems a long quarter of an 
hour, I look again at the clock, that 
white-faced, impassive umpire has 
registered exactly three minutes. 
Well, it is three minutes past three. 
I get up abruptly, startling the faded 
Irishman who is standing near me, 
smoking a dirty pipe and thinking of 
Heaven knows what, and go outside 
into the open air. And outside in the 
open air is Salonika, 
ii 



II 



THE rain, in an inconclusive 
way, has ceased, though the 
scupper-pipes still gurgle and 
cluck with the water running from 
above. I walk along the after deck, 
climb up the heap of sandbags built 
round the gun-platform, and take 
refuge in a sort of canvas sentry-box 
which the gunners have improvised 
out of ammunition cases, a spring 
mattress, and some old tarpaulins. 
Here I am more than ever solitary at 
this hour. The gun, looking like a 
gaunt cab-horse in its gray canvas 
shroud, droops its muzzle slightly, as 
though dispirited because we go so 
rarely to sea. Nothing else can I 

12 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

see of the ship, save the flagpole, a 
ghostly outpost of humanity, for 
beyond it the world has dissolved 
into a sad chaos of water and sky. 
There is no wind. The waters of the 
Gulf lie placid and obscure. The 
sky-line has vanished, and one has 
the illusion of floating in infinite 
space, in a sort of aerial Noah's Ark 
without any animals. The patches 
of white in the cloud-canopy are 
reflected with eerie accuracy in the 
lifeless and invisible mirror below. 
One feels a slight vertigo, for all 
things seem to have been swallowed 
up, and even Time, that last refuge 
of saints and sinners, seems to have 
stopped. 

The rain comes as a relief, as 
though the works of the universe 
were getting under way again. My 
knees being exposed, I decide that I 
have had enough of nature in solu- 

13 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

tion and climb down from the gun- 
platform. The moon, which is shin- 
ing behind the dense clouds, 
brightens the patches of white, and 
these are reflected on the wet deck. 
Picking my way carefully, for all 
scuttles are screened, I reach the 
machine-room. Nothing is changed 
save the hands of the clock: it is 
now half-past three. The faded 
Irishman has become a shade more 
brisk in his movements. From now 
on he will become more and more 
active and intelligent in carrying out 
his duties, until he reaches a climax 
of senseless energy at four by break- 
ing into speech with a "Well, good- 
night, sir," and vanishing into his 
kennel. His place is taken by a 
somnolent negro. 

At four the rain is pouring down 
with all its old violence, and I make 
my way along to the mess-room for 

14 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

more tea. I bump into a damp 
silent man, a Greek sailor, on night 
duty. He is supposed to keep a 
lookout at the gangway and tend the 
galley-fires. He does both very well. 
Some sailors are poor hands at stok- 
ing. The Russian, who occasionally 
acts as night-watchman, is no good. 
They say Russians understand tea. 
Our Russian understands nothing. 

The Japanese second cook, on 
being called by the Greek mariner, 
is furious with the fire. The Greek 
and Arab firemen do not understand 
that coal-dust is unsuitable for galley 
fires. There are, at times, inter- 
national complications. 

The Fourth Engineer and I once 
more foregather in the mess-room. I 
make the tea, and I do it this way. 
The tea-pot, of white china, is rinsed 
and scalded with boiling water. I 
then put in the correct quantity of 

x 5 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

tea, which is an art acquired only in 
the school of experience. Then I 
pour on the correct quantity of fresh- 
boiling water — another art. The tea 
is left to steep on the hob for as long 
as it takes to cut, toast, and butter 
two slices of bread. The tea is now 
ready. I pour it. Its colour is 
superb. Having done all this, I 
cast a look of triumph on the Fourth 
Engineer, who informs me that there 
is no milk; very much as a silly young 
staff officer might tell his general that 
the army has no ammunition. I 
retire to my room and return with a 
cream-jug full of condensed milk of 
an age so vague that only boiling 
water can reduce it to a liquid form. 
Thereupon we sit down, and having 
exhausted every conceivable subject 
of conversation six months ago, we 
drink and munch in silence. 

The militarists say that war is 
16 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

necessary to develop the soul of a 
nation; without war men would sink 
into stupidity and sloth. 

Having eaten and drunk in silence, 
we light cigarettes and go away, he 
down below to pump the boilers up, 
I to my machine-room to see how the 
somnolent negro is going on. He is 
going on very much as I expected. 
He wanders like a sleep-walker 
among the machinery, attending to 
his duties after his own fashion. I 
make up the log to four o'clock, 
examine certain things that may go 
wrong, but never do, and go out into 
the alleyway again. 

The hopeless dawn is approaching. 
A ghastly pallor now faintly out- 
lines a mountain which I indolently 
call Ben Lomond. The Gulf of 
Salonika is almost entirely sur- 
rounded by land, and the city is 
built on the slopes of a mountain. 

17 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

Ben Lomond is farther off to the 
eastward; other mountains form ram- 
parts to the west and north, while the 
Vardar River delta insinuates itself 
among the more rugged features in a 
most curious way. Southward, be- 
yond the headland that marks the 
entrance, the horizon is closed by the 
sublime peak of Olympos. The Gulf, 
therefore, is a kind of bowl, against 
the rim of which the clouds are 
condensed and held. Under their 
caps of cotton-woolly clouds the 
mountains are white with snow. 

We have come out of the void, and 
dark blobs are now recognizable as 
ships. Lights glitter along the shore. 
A motor-lighter passes, her engine 
exhaust beating the still air like a 
pulse. The silence is no longer pro- 
found or tragic. The world of men, 
the world of living men, is coming 
back, and I am glad. I have a 
18 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

weakness for the world of living men. 
A steamer, weighing her anchor with 
much puffing of steam from her 
windlass-exhaust, blows her whistle. 
It is a trumpet-blast, completing the 
rout of the powers of darkness. 

There is a crash from our galley. 
Someone, most probably the Japanese 
second cook, has dropped the poker. 
The Japanese second cook is a 
creature of moods, often passionate. 
He is, so they say, a student of 
philosophy at Tokyo University. He 
has come to sea to earn more money 
to complete his courses — of philos- 
ophy, I suppose. The chief cook, 
who is a Chinaman, has presumably 
completed his studies in philosophy, 
while the third cook, who is an 
Italian, has never studied philosophy 
at all. Anyhow, various noises com- 
bine to inform me that all three are 
now in the galley engaged in making 

19 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

bread and preparing breakfast for the 
crew in a more or less philosophical 
manner. 

Other sounds assert themselves, 
too. Weird moans from below an- 
nounce the Fourth Engineer's success 
with his boilers. A small dog in the 
firemen's house aft yelps tediously 
at an imaginary enemy. He pre- 
sumes upon his rating as a mascot. 
A sleepy Greek boy, with weak eyes 
and legs, appears from the forecastle 
with a tin tea-pot. He is reported to 
be a Venizelist. Venizelists, I ob- 
serve, make poor sailors. The night 
watchman, who answers to the name 
of Papa Gregovis, but whose political 
tendencies are obscure, fades away 
forward. The oiler in the main 
engine-room, a one-eyed mulatto, 
carries his tea-can along. 

So an hour passes. 

Once again the rain has ceased and 

20 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

I go out on the after deck and walk to 
and fro. I discover the crowded 
roadstead of Salonika. Black blobs 
have become transports, misty phan- 
toms have changed into hospital 
ships, gray shadows into men-of-war. 
One hospital ship is preparing to 
move — does move, as I watch her. 
She is girdled with a necklace of 
emerald lights. On her rail is a red 
cross of electric lights. She is very 
beautiful, a jewelled wraith moving 
noiselessly across our bows. Several 
Greek schooners, with all sails set, 
float near us on the glassy water, 
waiting for a wind. Time is no ob- 
ject with them. One appears close 
to our quarter, like a ghost of some 
past age, a fabulous blue galleon with 
silver sails. She is part of the ridicu- 
lous unreality of the whole business. 



21 



Ill 

I DECIDE suddenly to have a 
pipe, and go in to get tobacco 
and matches. However, the 
mess-room steward is bringing in tea 
and toast for two, so I postpone the 
pipe. As I sit down on the stool by 
the desk, the Fourth Engineer comes 
in, wiping his hands on a piece of 
waste. He is gay. It is nearly six. 
The boilers, sanitary, and fresh- 
water tanks are all full. Everything 
is in order. At seven he will dive 
into his room and be no more seen. 
He sits down beside me and partakes 
of his seventh cup of tea and piece of 
toast since nine o'clock last night. 
He wants to go up for an examina- 

22 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

tion. He has been away fifteen 
months as Fourth. He will probably 
be away another fifteen. He is los- 
ing his chances. And they need 
young men at home. 

One of the great advantages of 
war, the militarists tell us, is that 
young men get their chance. War 
gives us scope, provokes initiative, 
stimulates the soul, quickens the 
brain. 

With my pipe alight, I take up my 
walk on the after deck. The setting 
moon is a mere pool of radiance, like 
an electric lamp swathed in muslin. 
A rift in the clouds over Ben Lomond 
shows a pale blue patch of sky with 
the morning star shining in the 
middle of it. The lights of the port 
shine like stars, too, in the rain- 
washed air. Men move about the 
ship, launches begin to cross and 
recross the harbour. A steamer near 

23 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

us suddenly wakes into life. Electric 
clusters and arc-lights blaze about 
her decks, derricks swing and winches 
rattle. Another ship, a collier, hauls 
up her anchor and very cautiously, 
very stealthily, approaches a cruiser, 
as though she were about to pounce 
upon her without warning. But the 
cruiser is in full possession of all her 
faculties apparently, for hundreds of 
men appear on deck, whistles are 
blown, fenders are lowered, ropes are 
thrown out, and at length the two lie 
in a close embrace, and the cruiser's 
Morse light winks rapidly several 
times to inform the world that all is 
as it should be. 

As I turn from this fascinating 
spectacle I behold the French lighter 
approaching. The French lighter is 
a cumbrous old Turkish sailing ship 
propelled by a minute French tug 
lashed to her side. She seems to 

24 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

have her arm round the tug's shoul- 
ders. Loud hammering announces 
the steam making its way along our 
water-logged deck-pipes. A shrill 
whistle from the French tug elicits a 
similar whistle from someone on our 
upper deck. Several soldiers in 
khaki make their appearance about 
the ship. The French tug and 
lighter come alongside and are made 
fast. A swarm of dirty Greeks climb 
up and begin to remove the hatches. 

You cannot honestly say the day 
has broken. It is much more as 
though the blank opacity of the night 
had worn thin. That blue rent in 
the dirty tarpaulin of the sky over 
Ben Lomond has closed up, and a fine 
misty drizzle begins to fall. 

I retire to the door of the machine- 
room, where I encounter my friend 
the French sergeant-major. He is a 
handsome Marseillais, by profession 

25 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

a dealer in antique furniture and objets 
d'art. For two years he has been 
supervising the transportation of beef 
and mutton from ship to shore. He 
is of the opinion that war develops 
our higher faculties to the utmost, 
and that without war civilized man 
would degenerate into a gross pre- 
occupation with material needs. 
However, just now he is good-hum- 
ouredly frantic because there is no 
steam. I inquire what it is that it 
is. He waves his arms. I say, 
"Pas de vapeur?" Ah! he nods and 
waves his arms again. I wave mine. 
In a species of utilitarian French 
which I find that French men — and 
women — understand, I inform him 
that the vapeur is on its way, but that 
it is being retarded by the condensa- 
tion in the pipes, due to the odious 
weather. He agrees, and waves his 
arms. I nod vigorously and wave 
iG 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

mine. We are brothers. We shake 
hands. He hands me a copy of 
L'Opinion or L Independant, diminu- 
tive news-sheets dear to the heart of 
the Armde d'Orient. I deluge him 
with thanks and he returns to the 
hatch to load the Greeks with op- 
probrious epithets. 

While perusing the little French 
paper, I am accosted by the philoso- 
phical second cook, the dark-eyed 
gentleman from Tokyo, and the very 
human third cook, a dark-eyed 
gentleman from Naples, who wish to 
enter the cold storage. I give them 
the keys and they vanish into a 
cupboard-like cavity where they blow 
on their fingers and proceed to quarrel 
over legs of beef, corpses of sheep, or 
other less desirable provender. 

The French paper tells me a great 
deal that I wish to know. I rejoice 
particularly in the very cavalier 
27 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

attitude it takes up with regard to 
neutrals. It trounces Cons tan tine 
very much as the French sergeant- 
major trounces the Greek cargo-men. 
I pass half an hour very pleasantly 
with L 'Opinion or L 'Independant. 
I find it is seven o'clock. The 
decks are being washed. Firemen 
and engine-room men, a variegated 
crowd of British, Greek, Arab, and 
negro, pass along and go below. 
Carpets are being shaken, scuttle- 
brasses polished, floors scrubbed. 
The city of Salonika becomes dimly 
visible, a gray smudge picked out 
with white columns and red domes. 
A battleship is going out to practise, 
and presently you hear the heavy 
bang-bang of her big guns reverberat- 
ing against the bluffs of the Kara- 
burnou. Stone quarries behind the 
town take up the tale, and for an 
hour or so you will hear the explo- 
28 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

sions sullenly booming in the still, 
damp air. 

The hours drag on. It is a quarter 
to eight. My somnolent negro sud- 
denly becomes wide awake and 
hurries along the deck to call his 
relief. I make a general and par- 
ticular examination of everything in 
my care, and, rubbing my chin, 
decide to shave. There is a tendency 
to grow slack and slovenly in cir- 
cumstances like these. One says, 
"Who cares ?" and "What does it 
matter ? " A slow poison of indolence 
is in the air. I must shave. As a 
rule I am negligent, but this morning 
I make a hasty decision that this 
must end. I will, I announce to my- 
self, shave, breakfast, and go ashore. 
As a rule I turn in as soon as I have 
eaten. I will go ashore. 

I tell my mate I am going and seek 
information concerning a convey- 
29 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

ance. I inquire of the Second Officer 
which lighter is going away first. He 
does not know. He never does know. 
He is the most complete agnostic I 
have ever met. I ask one of the 
soldiers, whose king and country- 
have taken him away from his job on 
a farm and set him to tally meat. 
He says he thinks the extra British 
lighter will finish first. I then dis- 
cover the extra British contingent 
loading twenty tons of canned goods 
— sardines, salmon, and cling peaches; 
why cling peaches, I cannot say. So I 
drop down the rope ladder to the light- 
er's deck and discover the two naval 
stokers getting the engines ready 
for starting. They are Bolinder en- 
gines. 

If the reader does not know what a 
Bolinder engine is, he is a happy man. 
A Bolinder engine is the devil. I once 
worked on a ship whose launch had a 

3° 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

Bolinder engine, and it nearly killed 
me. 

By the time the bulbs are hot 
enough to start, the senior artificer 
catches sight of me and we fraternize. 
He is a pale blond middle-aged man 
with the expression of mingled 
humility and efficiency common to 
lower-deck ratings in the Navy. This 
lighter, he tells me, was under fire at 
Gallipoli. He shows me a patch on 
either side of the engine-room plat- 
ing: the entry and exit of a twelve- 
pounder shell. It must have passed 
within a few inches of his neck. With 
this exception he has led a humdrum 
parcels-delivery sort of life. Sud- 
denly, as his assistant opens a valve, 
the engine starts with a roar and then 
settles down to the fluttery beat and 
cough of an oil engine with the clutch 
out. 

We discuss the merits and demerits 

3i 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

of Bolinder engines. I hazard the 
remark that personally I prefer 
steam. The man's face lights up for 
a moment as he answers: "Ah, me, 
too!" You know where you are with 
steam. Steam is the friend of man. 
Steam engines are very human. 
Their very weaknesses are under- 
standable. Steam engines do not 
flash back and blow your face in. 
They do not short-circuit and rive 
your heart with imponderable electric 
force. They have arms and legs and 
warm hearts and veins full of warm 
vapour. We all say that. Give us 
steam every time. You know where 
you are with steam. 

So much for the trip ashore — one 
meets a stranger with the knowledge 
of the craft. As we climb up out of 
the tiny engine-room, I observe that 
we are now inside the stone jetty of 
the Greek harbour. Several large 

32 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

transports are discharging men, 
mules, horses, guns, locomotives, and 
so on. We slip gently alongside, and 
with a cheery word and a shake of the 
hand I quit my friend with his cargo 
of cling peaches and the rest, and 
jump ashore. It occurs to me in 
passing that the letters from the front 
never mention cling peaches and 
fresh mutton. No, the burden of 
their song is always "bully beef" and 
"skilly/' whatever that may be. They 
also speak disparagingly of "tinned 
stuff." 

I cannot get those cling peaches 
and sardines out of my head. 



33 



IV 

AND here I am ashore in 
/-\ Salonika! I feel absurdly 
shy amid so much busy life. 
It is almost as busy as a provincial 
town in England on market days. I 
feel something like an escaped pris- 
oner. They say that convicts, when 
they are liberated, wander aimlessly 
about, not knowing what to do with 
their liberty. I feel just like that. I 
wander about among huge piles of 
hardware, stared at critically by 
sentries of all nations. I make for 
the Custom House Gate, and I 
become suddenly aware that the 
sun is shining through a jagged 
rent in the white clouds over Ben 

34 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

Lomond, and that I am very warm 
indeed. 

There is something tragic about 
Salonika. I have visited many 
goodly states and cities, and I doubt 
if there be one other on the globe to 
compare with Salonika in her in- 
genious combination of splendour and 
squalor. She is a dirty queen, sitting 
in filthy rags, with gems about her 
noisome girdle, and a diadem upon 
her scrofulous brow. She babbles in 
all the tongues of Europe and speaks 
none of them aright. She has no 
native language, no native air. She 
is all things to all men, Jew and Gen- 
tile, Moslem and Frank. She is 
everything and nothing. The winds 
of heaven blow among the ruined 
turrets of her citadel, while the 
mosquitoes from the Vardar swamps 
sing ten million strong in the purlieus 
of the port. She is very proud. She 

3S 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

has nothing left to give but death, 
yet the nations fling themselves upon 
her and quarrel for the honour of her 
embrace. 

I was thinking all this as I picked 
my way in the mud along the road to 
the Place de la Liberte, because I had 
thought of it often before. It is all 
true. Quitting the Custom House, 
which is a building of French design, 
I pass the Olympos Palace Hotel, an 
edifice of Berlin architecture, all 
curls and whirls and involute swirls. 
At this point is the Place de la 
Liberte, facing the landing place 
known as Venizelos Steps. The 
square is not worthy of the name, 
being a mere wide strip of Venizelos 
Street, and consisting exclusively of 
cafes. The steps are flanked by two 
kiosks which contain bunks for the 
night watch. This is the heart of the 
city. Past this point there rushes a 

36 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

never-ending tide of tram-cars, pe- 
destrians of all nations, ambulance 
wagons, motor lorries, cavalry and 
artillery, donkey carts and mule 
teams, staff motor-cars and dispatch- 
riders on motorcycles — good men, 
bad men, beggar men, thieves. 

Along the front Greek schooners 
are discharging charcoal, paraffin, 
stone, fish, vegetables, and peanuts. 
Around the steps crowd many 
launches — British, French, Italian, 
Greek, and Serbian; row-boats, sail- 
boats, ships' cutters awaiting vege- 
tables, and ship's dinghies awaiting 
their commanders. Old ladies in 
native costume, caricatures of Queen 
Victoria as a widow, move to and fro, 
gossiping. Shoe-shine boys almost 
trip up the unwary stranger in their 
endeavours to clean his boots by main 
force. And then, half a dozen strong, 
come the news-girls with their loads 

37 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

of twenty-two different newspapers 
in six different languages. 

They are not very clean little girls, 
but I regard them with tolerance as 
they press up to sell me a Balkan 
News. They never by any chance 
mistake one's nationality. I sup- 
pose the English character is notice- 
able in Salonika. Moreover, the 
Englishman is a fool about money. I 
know, because I am a fool about 
money; yet I am not such a fool as 
some. The French, Italian, Russian 
officer, counts his change with 
meticulous care and gives a very very 
small tip. The Britisher, officer or 
man, grasps the coins, looks at them 
without really knowing whether he is 
being cheated or not, bestows munifi- 
cent largesse, and strides out, leaving 
the Greek waiter full of contempt for 
the burly fool who parts from his 
money so easily. 

38 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

This is by the way. We are 
learning so many things in this war, 
that quite possibly the Englishman 
abroad may learn to keep his money 
in his pocket. Personally, I have 
not much to spend, and each 
drachma must produce its utmost 
value. But I can gratify my native 
craving to be thought a philan- 
thropist when I buy a paper. I give 
all those dirty little girls a penny 
each. 

Do not misunderstand me. I do 
not say they are ugly little girls. 
Their noses do not run in the em- 
barrassing way common among the 
street-children of a northern clime. 
They are all different. One is dark, 
with long thick brows over black eyes, 
her hair in a thick plait. Another is 
blonde and has a red nose. Another 
is quite tall and will probably become 
a dancer, she has such neat little legs 

39 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

and feet. Her stockings, by the way, 
are not a pair. Another has a pair 
but no garters, and she looks very 
untidy. Yet another has garters but 
no stockings, and her legs are very 
dirty. A very tiny little person has 
only one forlorn copy of a Greek 
paper, and she is thrust away by her 
more muscular rivals. I give her a 
penny, too. I am popular. 

When all are recompensed they 
sidle away, looking back wistfully for 
a moment. I dare say they are 
wondering if I am a millionaire in 
disguise. Then the whirling vortex 
of Venizelos Steps sucks them in 
again; they spy another sailor coming 
ashore, and they collect and fling 
themselves upon him, a compact, 
yelling Macedonian phalanx of 
youthful amazons. 

Turning eastward, one sees the 
city front curving very gently as far 
4 o 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

as the White Tower, nearly a mile 
away. Beyond that superb land- 
mark the new suburban town spreads 
out indefinitely amid shabby foliage. 
The view up Venizelos Street is 
closed by a covered-in bazaar. The 
yellow buildings of the front are a 
confusing medley of cafes, cigarette 
shops, hotel entrances, paper shops, 
hardware shops, barbers' shops, 
cinema theatres, Turkish baths, a 
fish-market, farriers' shops, cafes- 
chantantSy charcoal stores, more 
cigarette shops, more cafes; a few 
immense private houses with inter- 
esting courtyards and discontented- 
looking sentries in battered boxes, 
one or two small houses with tre- 
mendous walnut doors and black 
iron hinges, bolts, and window-bars; 
and finally, just as the heat and acrid 
smells from motors and horses begin 
to parch the throat, and the devilish 

41 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

cobbles to tire the unaccustomed 
feet, there is a cafe in a covered 
garden, with the White Tower stand- 
ing alone in a grass plot at the water- 
side. 



42 



V 



SALONIKA makes her own 
beer, but it is not of uniform 
quality. Sometimes the litre 
will be very palatable. Often the 
best thing to do is to leave it. Dutch 
beer is drunk, and is very good. I am 
afraid saccharine takes the place of 
malt in the local product. At the 
worst, one can get passable coffee and 
good brandy. Seated among the 
uniforms at the little tables, you may 
regard Salonika in a characteristic 
mood. 

The sun shines strongly now 
through immense piled-up masses of 
white clouds, and there is sufficient 
wind to sail a boat across the Gulf. 

43 



X 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

The Greek standard waves gently 
from the top of the White Tower. 
The White Tower, let it be said, is a 
perfectly round cylinder of white- 
washed stone, surmounted by a 
smaller turret and a flag-staff. There 
is one small door over which is an 
inscription in Turkish, very beautiful 
to look at, utterly incomprehensible 
unless you know Turkish. One or 
two small windows and a small ledge 
half way up are the only breaks in the 
vast, smooth surface. The Turks 
used it far some purpose, I suppose, 
or they would not have built it. The 
legend has it that it was called at one 
time The Bloody Tower, but that 
may have been only a manner of 
speaking. I have been shipmate 
with a Turk only once or twice in my 
life, and so far as I know them they 
are competent, orderly, well-bred 
people. I very much regret that 

44 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

fate has made us enemies in this 
war. 

As I was saying, the blue-and- 
white Greek standard floats from the 
battlements of the White Tower. 
All around you float officers of the 
Greek army in blue-and-silver full 
uniforms. They look slightly 

theatrical, because all the other 
armies are in service clothes. The 
ends of their silver-plated scabbards 
are muddy. So are their spurs. 
Many of them are handsome in a 
fashion-plate way: dead- white skin, 
dead-black moustaches, long legs, 
thin noses, dark eyes, empty fore- 
heads. One in particular attracts 
one's attention. He is wearing blue- 
and-white cocks' feathers in his hat, 
white kid gloves on his hands, and 
immense Hessian boots with silver 
spurs on his feet. His sword is 
across his knees and he is explaining 

45 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

something with great energy to his 
companions. 

A French air-man, who has skinned 
his nose (possibly in a sudden 
descent) and who wears the Military 
Cross, sits behind a glass of ver- 
mouth. Several Russian lieutenants, 
in their beautiful green tunics and 
soft leather boots, are conversing 
with a French major. An Italian 
captain is reading a book. An Eng- 
lish captain is talking to a lady. 
Some Serbian officers appear to be 
talking to themselves. Not one of 
them seems to have anything to do. 
Perhaps they think the same of me. 
Let us take the car back. The tall 
and handsome Greek officers cram 
into one poor little Ford runabout 
and rattle off up the road. Let us 
take the car. A Salonika tram-car 
is interesting, believe me. 

They nearly always haul a second- 
46 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

class trailer behind them. We go 
second class. It is a very small car, 
and it is very full. The fare is a 
penny. A Greek penny is a nickel 
coin with a hole in the centre, so that 
it looks like an aluminium washer. 
The occupants of the car are of all 
ages. Boys and girls and priests are 
in the majority. The children are 
going to school, as may be seen by 
the books in their hands. The priests 
are going — wherever priests go in the 
morning. If they were going to the 
barber's it would do them no harm. 
I admit that their flowing black 
gowns and extraordinary top hats are 
picturesque; but why should the pic- 
turesque persist in being insanitary? 
I like the children better. They 
are clean and wholesome. Most of 
them, I observe, have ticket-books, 
from which the conductor removes a 
coupon. This arrangement, I sus- 

47 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

pect, is favoured by the parents, be- 
cause the children might save the fare 
and go to the pictures instead. The 
car passes the doors of several cinema 
theatres, and the youngsters babble 
excitedly as they discuss the vivid 
posters that are stuck up outside. 
One lad of twelve is deep in a 
penny dreadful. I look over his 
shoulder and wish I could decipher 
the story. He wears a low-necked 
suit with sailor collar and French tie, 
blue corduroy shorts, patent-leather 
button boots, and silk socks. His 
brown legs are bare. The whole 
look of him is Byronic, save that 
instead of a slouch hat he wears a 
peaked naval cap on one side of a 
dark head. Byronic, too, are the 
illustrations to his dreadful. A girl is 
tied to a railway line and two des- 
peradoes struggle with daggers. I 
peep farther over his shoulder. He 
4 8 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

is so absorbed in the story that he 
notices nothing. I muse upon his 
future. What will he be, when he 
grows up ? Is his father a Venizelist ? 
Of what race is he ? How does this 
Grecian sprig, who reads penny- 
dreadfuls in an electric tram-car, 
regard us Britishers who have come 
over the sea, like the Romans and 
Normans and Franks of old, to leave 
our bones on the Balkan ranges ? Out 
in the Gulf ride his country's war- 
ships with a foreign flag on their 
gaffs. Does he care? I doubt it. He 
turns over the page without looking 
up. 

But of a sudden there is a blare of 
martial music. The car has stopped. 
We are in the midst of a procession. 
Let us get out. We reach the side- 
walk with a run and find the pro- 
cession is wheeling round the corner, 
just beyond, into the Place, and up 

49 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

Venizelos Street. It is the new- 
Greek Nationalist Army — new uni- 
forms, new rifles, new mountain 
batteries, new officers — all very new. 
They march in fifties, and cries of 
" Venizelos !" "Viva!" and other less 
articulate noises mingle with much 
clapping of hands and clinking of 
scabbards. Our glorious friend with 
the cocks' feathers and white kid 
gloves is in all his glory now, directing 
the procession. He salutes continu- 
ally. After the soldiers come motor- 
cars with generals and admirals. 
Some of the generals are, in the 
words of the penny novelette, a 
blaze of decorations. No mortal 
man could live long enough or have 
valour enough to earn all the medals 
these gentlemen wear in tiers on 
their padded bosoms. However, 
everybody claps, so I clap, too. 
They are all going to the front to- 

5° 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

morrow, they say, so let us bury 
criticism. So they pass. I stand 
near a large-sized sergeant-major of 
the R. F. A. and I observe a peculiar 
expression of astonishment on his 
bronzed face as he salutes. If I 
read it aright he is thinking, "Well, 
I'm blowed! What a circus!" 

After the uniforms come the 
civilian members of the new Greek 
Government. There is a good deal 
of the theatrical star about their 
appearance, due, I suppose, to the 
silk hats and opera cloaks and lav- 
ender gloves they affect. They wear 
their hair rather longer than our 
politicians, too. My sergeant-major 
salutes, but I catch his eye. He 
throws up his chin and grins, as 
though to say, "I'm doin* this by 
orders, so don't blame me." 

Presently the motor-cars change to 
pair-horse carriages. Some are 

5i 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

clapped, some are hissed by the 
crowd on sidewalk and balcony. 
The pair-horse carriages change to 
one-horse and the sergeant-major 
ceases to salute. Several political 
gentlemen in one-horse vehicles lift 
their silk hats. As no one claps they 
put them on again, and sit back with 
expressions of rigid ill temper on 
their faces. 

One does not believe in this sort of 
thing for a moment. It is all too 
unreal. The superficial reason for 
this doubt in a spectator's mind is 
that the public never knows what is 
actually going on. One of the great 
advantages of war, they tell us, is 
that it clears the air. We learn who 
are our real enemies and who are our 
real friends. War is that something, 
not ourselves, that makes for righte- 
ousness. War abolishes sham and 
pretense. 

52 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

But there is another reason. You 
cannot impose liberty upon a people 
any more than you can make them 
good by legislation. Rousseau, whose 
prescience in this matter is almost un- 
canny, asserts this. "Every people/' 
he says, <c to which its situation gives 
no choice save that between com- 
merce and war, is weak in itself: it 
depends on its neighbours, and on 
circumstances; its existence can never 
be more than short and uncertain. " 
And he quotes with approval this 
maxim: "Liberty may be gained, but 
it can never be recovered.' ' 

Well, they are gone, and General 
Sarrail, who has been standing on 
Venizelos Steps with Colonel Christo- 
doulos, shakes hands with that gentle- 
man and hurries back to his office. I 
remark as he passes that he carries no 
sword and wears no decorations what- 
ever. 

S3 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

It is now eleven o'clock and I de- 
cide on a walk up Venizelos Street 
before going aboard. 

Venizelos Street is the Bond Street 
and Fifth Avenue of Salonika. All 
the great stores of the city are here. 
I don't suppose an American or a 
Londoner would call them great 
stores. They are no counterparts of 
Wanamaker's or Harrods', of Green- 
hut Cooper's or Whiteley's. But they 
are great in comparison with the 
aboriginal hole in the wall which the 
oriental calls a shop. Here in Venize- 
los Street, you can buy everything 
you want and many hundreds of 
things you don't. There is a good 
bookshop, if you read French. Dutch 
and American goods predominate at 
present. There is a bank with 
formidable sentries marching to and 
fro, possibly to intimidate with- 
drawals. There is a tailor who 

54 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

will undertake every conceivable uni- 
form, and make them all utterly 
wrong. 

We pass all these and come to 
smaller establishments — the inevit- 
able postcard and cigarette shops, 
shops with figs hung in festoons and 
vegetable marrows blocking the tiny 
entrance. At length we cross Jean 
Tsimiski Street, which is the Fleet 
Street of Salonika. Here are forged 
the thunderbolts of the press. Here, 
high up in a yellow barrack, is con- 
ceived and executed the daily issue 
of the Balkan News y the only paper 
of its kind. If you are a poet, go 
upstairs and see the editor. So long 
as you do not mention Mount Olym- 
pos or the Red Light District, he 
will be glad to publish your works 
in daily instalments. 

I am no poet, so Jean Tsimiski 
Street is passed and we enter the 

SS 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

covered bazaar. Here we are in the 
Orient. Here are no fixed prices, but 
a battle royal over every deal. Here 
the merchant stands outside and 
uses all the eloquence of which he is 
capable to lure you into his tiny fast- 
ness. If he happens to be inside and 
he sees your eye flicker ever so 
slightly toward his wares, he is out in 
a flash and implores you to inspect 
his stock. Sooner or later you will 
fall. You see some gimcrack or 
other which takes your fancy. You 
are dragged within. You ask the 
price. Having appraised your posi- 
tion in life, he names a figure, about 
two hundred per cent, above what he 
expects. You laugh in his face and 
walk out. He pursues you, abating 
a hundred per cent. You walk on, 
and he offers it on your own terms. 
You return and agree to take it. 
Then, instead of concluding the deal, 

56 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

this exasperating person will prob- 
ably show you something else and 
offer to throw it in for another ten 
francs ! 

And it is all rubbish. Turkish 
slippers and fezzes made in Austria, 
daggers made in Germany, Japanese 
silks and fans, black amber orna- 
ments advertised as from Erzerum, 
but probably from Germany, ancient 
coins and vases, ikons, and charms — 
all the junk of the foolish traveller, is 
here. I observe smart British nurses 
buying souvenirs for friends in Bal- 
ham and Birmingham, smart sub- 
alterns purchasing cigarette-cases 
and walking-stick handles, daggers, 
and silly old Turkish pistols. But 
after all, they are young, and quite 
probably they do not know the East. 
I recall my first trip to the Orient 
in a tramp steamer, when I, too, 
bought : 

57 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

Walkin' sticks o' carved bamboo, an' blow- 
fish stuffed an* dried; 

Fillin' my bunk wi' rubbishry the Chief put 
over-side. 

After all, this is the time of their 
lives, these foolish young people with 
their curios and their wrist-watches 
and the stars on their shoulders and 
in their eyes. 

So, walking through the bazaar, 
one sees another phase of the only 
thing worth looking at — humanity. 
One sees the little Turkish boy being 
fitted with a suit in an outfitter's, or 
the little Turkish maiden buying a 
comb. One meets the Jewishy tout, 
who speaks all languages — "Oh, yes. 
Engleesh, all right, Johnny''; the 
fatuous humbug! One sees French 
soldiers buying buttons and needles 
and thread; the canny creatures! 
One sees solemn bearded Israelites, 
in flowing gabardines, stalking to and 

58 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

fro, conversing, strangely enough, in 
Spanish. One sees these things or 
one does not, according to one's 
temperament and training. Per- 
sonally, I would like to see more of 
them. I feel there is something in 
this Babel for me, if I could but stay 
and catch the subtle cosmopolitan 
spirit of it. But that may not be. 
It is time to return. I go on at two ! 



59 



VI 

TO DEPICT a monotony is a 
difficult and precarious art, 
and needs for its justification 
a grand ulterior aim. Such an aim 
would be out of place in these simple 
papers. I merely wish to make the 
reader see, as well as I can, how the 
glory of war throws a certain sombre 
shadow over the lives of some ob- 
scure seafarers — a shadow in which 
little save the unregarded vir- 
tues of patience and vigilance can 
grow. 

But even in such conditions there 

are gleams in the dark. Even to 

phlegmatic Britishers the astonishing 

phantasmagoria of Balkan life pre- 

60 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

sents occasional phases of comedy 
and interest. As for example: 

Before going aboard I decide to 
have another drink. At first I think 
of going into Floca's. Floca's is the 
Ritz-Carlton of Salonika; but it is 
not Salonika. It is merely a small 
replica of Walker's at Alexandria, the 
Eastern Exchange at Port Said, the 
Verdi at Genoa, or Florian's at 
Venice. The British officer has pop- 
ularized Floca's, and so has made 
Floca, if such a person exist, rich. 
The uniforms of five nations mingle 
at the marble-topped tables. It is 
the only place where you can get tea 
in a city which never drinks tea. 
Here the nurses and the subalterns 
can eat chocolate eclairs and Sally 
Lunns under the very noses of 
brigadiers. Floca's reeks of wealth 
and Occidental refinement. I stand 
in the Place de la Liberte and con- 
61 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

template the glittering throng within 
the great doors. And I turn away. 
I decide against Floca's. I know a 
less reputable place where it will be 
quiet, and where the beer is a penny 
a litre cheaper. Allons done. 

It is round the corner, on the sea 
front, between the market and an 
unfortunate alley where mendicants 
eat fish with their fingers and quarrel 
over stray lepta. It is what is known 
as a cafe-chantant y a large lofty barn 
of a room, with a plush balcony for 
customers, a small stage, and a 
piano. This sort of establishment 
does its profitable business at night, 
when I am in bed. Nevertheless, I 
imagine that it can never be more 
amusing than when I see it, its harsh 
decrepitude revealed in the clear 
dancing sunlight reflected from the 
sea, and the gloom of its corners 
alive with bizarre forms. 
62 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

I order my beer from a Greek 
gentleman who reluctantly leaves a 
political conversation to attend to 
me. Although I am almost the only 
customer, there are quite a dozen 
people engaged round the piano and 
in front of a camera. For this is 
rehearsal- time for the artists who 
grace the stage in the evening. A 
weary pianist in Greek khaki strums 
the air of a song, and a rouged and 
jewelled lady leans over him, singing 
and beating time with her hands and 
feet. Another young lady sits near 
me, her feet on the table in front of 
her, showing much stocking, hum- 
ming a song, and pretending to study 
the sheet of music she holds before 
her. Her hat is on one side. So, 
for that matter, is her nose. Sud- 
denly she rises and begins to walk 
aimlessly among the tables, still 
humming her song. I don't think it 

^3 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

is a very good song, to judge by the 
hum. Suddenly she emits a squall, 
which is answered by another squall 
behind the curtains of the little stage, 
and a bony female, in green silk and 
spangles, thrusts her frizzled head 
and stringy neck through the open- 
ing. They talk, and when each has 
elicited from the other a wild gust of 
laughter, the spangled one vanishes, 
only to appear immediately at the 
side. 

My attention is now attracted to a 
dark corner where strangely garbed 
forms are writhing in an apparently 
interminable embrace. The photog- 
rapher, an itinerant of the streets, 
fusses methodically with his pre- 
historic camera. Several Jewesses, 
their eyes flashing on either side of 
large powdered noses, sit round, 
drinking vermouth and gin, and 
watching the dim performance with 
64 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

tolerant smiles. At length, by mov- 
ing several tables nearer, I can make 
out a couple of acrobats engaged in 
tying themselves into a sort of hu- 
man clove-hitch. They seem to me 
to be attempting the impossible. 
Perhaps they are. Perhaps they are 
idealists, like the brothers in the 
Goncourts' novel, "Les Freres Zem- 
ganno." I am, in this matter, par 
excellence a detached spectator. One 
is short and thick, the other slim and 
athletic. I see the face of the latter 
peering up from between the legs of 
his colleague — a thin, distorted face, 
with strained, unseeing, yet strangely 
watchful-looking eyes, the cheeks 
smeared with rivulets of perspiration, 
the brow damp and pallid. Suddenly 
they collapse and fall apart. Another 
failure. They hold their wrists, re- 
garding each other with expressions 
of pain and malevolence. The pho- 

65 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

tographer continues to potter about, 
ignoring their futile antics until he is 
given the word. 

They elect to take a breathing 
spell, and the spangled lady assumes 
her position on the carpet, keeping 
up all the while a torrent of conversa- 
tion with the student of song, who is 
now seated on a table near by. An- 
other figure emerges from the wings 
of the stage, a dreadful travesty of a 
hero, a hero with bandy legs, yellow 
whiskers, and a false nose of heroic 
dimensions. He is dressed in yellow 
and red. He and the spangled lady 
strike a love-attitude, he registering 
dignity, she hopeless passion. The 
photographer bestirs himself, dives 
under his black cloth, and waves a 
mesmerizing hand back and forth, to 
lend emphasis to his own muffled 
commands. With an abrupt gesture 
he snatches the cap from the lens, 
66 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

beats time in the air slowly — one, 
two, three — claps it on again, and 
the group smile foolishly at each 
other. 

It is amusing, yet I see a good deal 
of pathos in these poor strolling 
players. They are doing their best. 
No doubt, in the evening, when the 
tables are thronged, and the music 
strives with the babel of voices and 
the clink of glass, they have their 
reward. 

I confess, however, to a sporting 
interest in the acrobats who are un- 
able to attain the position in which 
they desire to be photographed. I 
order a fresh beer. Several shoe- 
blacks, paper-boys, peanut-vendors, 
and itinerant chocolate-merchants 
have come in, and regard me with 
chastened expectancy. I am persona 
non grata to these infernal pests of 
the Levant. By instinct, when I turn 

6? 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

to look at them, they recognize my 
antipathy. Each in his turn exam- 
ines my expression with shrewd skill, 
and fades away into the dazzling 
clangour of the street. At length our 
protagonists, emerging from a thicket 
of stacked chairs where they have 
been secluded during the last scene, 
take their stand once more upon the 
dingy carpet and look around with 
a morituri-te-salutamus expression. 
They grasp hands. The tall one pulls 
sharply. The short one makes a 
miraculous ascent into the air. For 
an instant his curved body and bent 
limbs are poised in unstable equilib- 
rium, and one might imagine him but 
that moment descended from above. 
For me he is foreshortened. I see 
him as one sees the angel who is hurl- 
ing the thunderbolt in Tintoretto's 
never-to-be-forgotten masterpiece. 
The piano is hushed. Now he is 
68 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

poised on the other's hands, on one 
hand. Enfin! In tense silence the 
photographer removes his lens-cap; 
there is a quiver of the outflung hand 
and the tall athlete flutters his eye- 
lids as he looks up with awful anxiety 
— pouf! It is finished, and we all 
breathe again as the short athlete 
comes down with a jump. I feel 
very glad indeed that they have 
succeeded. I like to see human 
beings succeed. 

Over at the piano, however, I can 
detect nothing that resembles 
success. The peripatetic student of 
song and the musical reservist are not 
having a very happy time. She has 
not even a vaudeville voice. From 
the manner in which the accompanist 
slaps the music and snarls over his 
shoulder at her, I gather that she has 
not yet mastered the notes. Every 
minute or so she turns her back on 
69 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

him and feigns a passionate with- 
drawal. He, poor wight, with a 
Balkan winter in the trenches in 
front of him, pays not the slightest 
attention to her tantrums. Then, 
after a perfectly furious altercation, 
they find a basis of agreement. She 
is to go on the stage and sing the song 
without words. Bon! She skips up, 
showing a great deal of stocking as 
she adjusts her garters and pulls down 
her cheap little jacket. But it ap- 
pears that she cannot sing the song, 
even without words. She begins: 

La-la, la-la la-la-h-lah! 
La-la . . . 

and stops, looking at me, of all 
people, with profound suspicion, as 
though I had stolen the rest of her lahs. 
A Jewess interjects a sentence, and 
both the accompanist and the young 
lady, to my astonishment, shriek with 
70 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

laughter. I laugh, too. It is in- 
fectious if bewildering. I realize how- 
hopeless it would be for me to try to 
comprehend their intricate psychol- 
ogy. I am a mere spectator from an 
alien planet, watching for a brief in- 
stant the antics of inexplicable sha- 
dows on a screen. I drink my beer 
and drift out into the noise and 
dazzle. I must go aboard. 

I skip across the road, dodging a 
trolley-car, an ambulance wagon, a 
donkey with silver-plated harness 
and a raw red chasm on his rump, a 
mad boy on a pink bicycle, and a 
cart drawn by two enormous oxen, 
their heads bowed beneath a mas- 
sive yoke. I gain the sea wall and 
follow it until I reach the kiosks that 
flank the dirty marble steps of the 
Venizelos landing. A boy in a boat 
immediately waves his arms and 
beckons to me as if I were the one 

7i 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

person in Salonika who could rescue 
him from life-long indigence. A /us- 
tros y the cynical name given to the 
home-grown shoe-shine boy, flings 
himself at my feet and endeavours 
gently to lift one of them to his box. 
I resist this infamous proposal. I 
ignore the demented youth in the 
boat. I walk out on the marble jetty 
and look calmly about for our own 
dinghy. It occasionally happens 
that I am in time to join the captain 
as he returns. I do not think that 
he likes the idea very much, but he 
makes no audible protest when an 
engineer sits beside him. However, 
there is no sign of either skipper or 
dinghy, so I turn again to the youth in 
the boat. He rows hastily to the 
steps, and motions me to get in and 
recline on his scarlet cushions. But 
I am not to be cozened. I demand a 
tariff. According to the guide-book 
72 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

he may charge me one drachma 
(about twenty cents) for a trip, with- 
out luggage, to the outer harbour. I 
am prepared to give two, since it is 
war-time and bread is dear. We 
begin to haggle. It is a phase of 
human folly very distasteful to an 
Englishman, this stupid enthrone- 
ment of cunning and knavish bluff in 
the forefront of all levantine trans- 
actions. The Anglo-Saxon is torn 
with the conflict of disparate desires. 
He wishes to show his unutterable 
scorn for the whole performance by 
flinging a triple fare in the huck- 
ster's face, and he has also a profound 
moral conviction that he ought "on 
principle" to pay the exact legal de- 
mand. I have done both. There 
is a certain amount of pleasure in 
each. I weigh their merits as I 
stand on Venizelos Steps and haggle 
with the boatman. Thus: 

73 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

Boatman. — Boat! Boat! You 
want boat? All right. 

Fare. — How much to beef-ship? 

Boatman.— T'ree shilling yes. You 
want boat! 

Fare. — Yes, I want a boat, but 
only for hire to go to the beef-ship. 
How much? 

Boatman. — T'ree shillin'. 

Fare. — Too much. 

[He turns away and fills his pipe 
with great care, and, sitting on the 
marble parapet, contemplates the har- 
bour. This is very disconcerting to the 
Boatman. He ties up and steps 
ashore, to follow the matter up. He 
approaches the Fare, who smokes 
stolidly .] 

Boatman. — You want boat? 

Fare. — Ah! How much to the 
beef-ship ? 

Boatman. — How mooch? T'ree 
shillin\ 

74 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

Fare. — No. Two francs. 

Boatman. — Come on. T'ree francs, 
eh? Yaas. 

Fare [stolidly]. — I will give you two 
francs. 

Boatman. — Yaas. All raight. 

'Alf-a-crown, eh? 

Fare. — Half-a-crown is three 
francs. I will give you two. 

Boatman. — Two shillin'? 

Fare [patiently]. — No. You see, 
it's this way: if you take me to the 
beef-ship, I will give you two francs. 
Do you get that right? Two! One 
and one. Two. 

Boatman. — All raight. Come on. 
[He goes down the steps.] 

Fare. — You understand then: two 
francs. No more. 

Boatman [blankly], — No more? 

Fare [blandly]. — No more. What 
did you think? 

Boatman. — T'ree shillin'. 

75 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

Fare [getting into the boat and taking 
the tiller lines]. — I shouldn't be sur- 
prised if some Englishman killed you 
for saying "three shillings/ ' my friend. 

If he were not so dirty he would be 
a nice-looking lad of the 1917 class. 
He is dressed in the usual composite 
rags of the Greek proletariat, part 
khaki, part European, part Turkish. 
He does not look as if he belonged to 
a conquering race. Neither, I sup- 
pose, do I; but the cases are not 
similar. My young boatman does 
not regard Janina as I regard the 
capture of Quebec, for example. 
Goodness only knows what he does 
regard, or how. He may be one of 
the conquered race. I ask him with 
large gestures to illustrate my mean- 
ing, if he is going to enlist, soldier 
— fight — gun — bang ! — beat Bulgar 
— eh ? He is puzzled, and perseveres 
76 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

with his oars. I reflect that he may 
be an anti-Venizelist. Presently, as 
we clear the inside shipping, he asks, 
as every Greek boatman asks: 
"When your ship go away, eh?" 
And I tell him a deliberate, cold- 
blooded lie! We do not inform 
Greek boatmen when our ships are 
going away. 

About this time my attention is 
held by the appearance of the sky. 
It is a sky I have learned to regard 
with a certain amount of interest. 
As my young boatman steps his 
mast and hoists his sail, I observe, 
high above the rolling banks and 
islets of cumulous vapour in the 
bowl of the Gulf, a film of trans- 
parent dapple-gray clouds assemb- 
ling. The whole of the upper air 
is mottled with their confusing tex- 
ture. A delightful sky in peace- 
times, a sky veiling the sun and 

77 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

making high noon agreeable. A sky 
to watch through the open window in 
springtime. A sky to paint, with a 
foreground of yellow crocuses and 
green grass and brown girls. A sky 
to look up at, from where one lies on 
the heather, and dream a boy's 
strange and delicate dreams. 

One of the advantages of war is the 
deeper and more intense interpreta- 
tion one learns to give to the common 
phenomena. This gay, romantic sky 
used to be nothing more than gay and 
romantic. Now I watch it with an 
experienced apprehension. And as 
I pass a man-of-war, I observe that 
the anti-aircraft crew are at drill. 
There is something curiously affec- 
tionate in the aspect of an anti- 
aircraft crew at work. The gunner 
is seated and his assistants are all 
grouped about him, heads together, 
as though whispering to each other 

78 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

the most delightful secrets. Per- 
haps they are. 

We come leisurely alongside. 
Standing on the grating at the foot of 
the accommodation ladder, I pay my 
young friend his two francs with a 
bonus of twopence. For a single 
moment he stands, from life-long 
habit, in an attitude eloquent of 
despair. I go up the ladder, smiling 
blandly at his outflung hands and 
upraised indignant eyes. Then he 
recovers himself, makes a gesture 
consigning the whole race of English- 
men to perdition, pockets the money, 
and rows away. Once more I am on 
board, and it is nearly two o'clock. 



79 



VII 

IT SHOULD never be forgotten, 
in a review of the seafaring life, 
that these casual and irrelevant 
encounters with the offscourings of 
hybrid races, though priceless to the 
philosopher and the artist, are of no 
human value to the sailor at all. 
The jaded landsman imagines that 
we seamen "see the world' ' and view 
"mankind from China to Peru." He 
romantically conceives us extracting 
the fine essences from the crude 
masses of humanity with whom we 
are thrown in contact in the seething 
ports of the Orient. He figures us ec- 
statically savouring the "unchanging 
East" and beholding "strange lands 
80 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

from under the arched white sails of 
ships." It must be confessed that 
popular fiction confirms these il- 
lusions. We who work in ships are 
supposed to be prototypes of Mr. 
Kipling's "Tramp Royal" — a flatter- 
ing but untrue assumption. 

But while an intelligent person can 
see readily that, to the unimagina- 
tive seafarer, this continual pro- 
cession of detached images will have 
no positive significance, very few 
observers realize how such an en- 
vironment tends also to indurate the 
soul. Yet so it is. In our rough, 
homely way, we are fatigued with 
distinctions, and reduce the Un- 
known to common denominators. 
We call Hindoos " coolies," Chinamen 
"Chinks," Americans "Yanks," Span- 
iards "Dagoes,"Italians"Spaghettis," 
and we let it go at that. We are 
majestically incurious about them 
81 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

all. There is no British type so 
narrow, so dogmatic, so ignorant, so 
impervious to criticism, so parochial 
in its outlook, as the seafaring man or 
officer. You would imagine, from 
our ideas, that we had remained all 
our days in our home towns. Indeed 
most of us have. Our real life beats 
in the little houses in Penarth, 
Swansea, Seaforth, White Inch, or 
South Shields. We have very little 
passion for the bizarre. We become 
callous to the impact of the stray 
alien, and feed our narrow hearts 
with wistful visions of an idealized 
suburban existence. 

Going on at two is quite a different 
thing from the ghastly affair of the 
small hours. Each period of the day 
has its own subtle quality, which no 
arbitrary rearrangement of our own 
hours of work and rest can destroy. 
And two o'clock in the afternoon is a 
82 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

time of disillusion, a time when a 
man has neither great faith nor pro- 
found convictions. The morning is 
gone, the evening too far away. 
Even tea-time seems at an immense 
and tragic distance. It is the slack- 
water period of the day. And it is 
the period when a man may perhaps 
experience, in the space of a flash, a 
peculiar sensation of being an im- 
postor! It is, I suppose, in such 
moments that generals, commanders, 
chief engineers, and the like jump 
overboard. It is a sensation extraor- 
dinarily vivid and brief. No ex- 
ternal evidence is of any avail to 
neutralize its dire and dreadful om- 
niscience. No personal written 
record, no esteem of lifelong friends, 
no permanent and visible accomplish- 
ment can shield the sensitive human 
soul, thus suddenly stripped bare by 
some devilish cantrip of its own 

83 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

mechanism. One feels a hollow 
sham. 

And the ship, at this hour, is 
strangely deserted. Those who have 
work are gone to it, those who are 
off duty are resting after a hot lunch. 
The day's ration of meat is gone; the 
soldiers are on an upper deck, out of 
sight. Thomas, stretched to an in- 
credible length on the deck steam- 
guard, snoozes in gross comfort. 
Ibrahim-el-Din, an Arab coal-passer, 
is smoking a meditative cigarette by 
the after-rail. The faded Irishman 
is perambulating in his stiff way 
round the machine, and I take charge 
for another six hours. A Greek 
sailor, no doubt a Venizelist, is 
painting a bulkhead in an amateur 
fashion. As I look through one of 
the after-window scuttles I observe 
our agnostic Second Officer drift past. 
He is probably going to resume his 
8 4 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

erotic novel, a species of fiction for 
which he has a strange passion. 

For an hour or so I look out of my 
machine-room window upon an un- 
tidy after-deck, and reflect upon the 
vicissitudes of War. Visible through 
the crystalline atmosphere, Salonika, 
floored with a jade-green sea and 
domed with dappled azure, resembles 
the painted curtain of some titanic 
theatre. It is in fact one of those 
monstrous "theatres of war" which 
are now giving a continuous per- 
formance to the whole world. But 
for us on transports that painted 
curtain is never lifted. We see noth- 
ing of the performance. We are 
mere stage carpenters, or caterers, or 
perhaps only stray freight wagons 
which bring some homely necessary 
material to the grand display. 

Such are my thoughts, more or 
less, when I catch sight suddenly of 

85 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

my friend Tubby, the fat marine, 
standing on the gun-platform and 
excitedly waving his arms toward the 
Vardar Marshes. I run out on deck. 
Tubby comes hurrying along, shout- 
ing in the hoarse voice that goes with 
immense girth and a short neck: 
"See'im,sir? ATawb! ATawb!" 
And so it is a Taube. After a 
momentary search of the upper 
reaches of the air, I spot him, a far- 
distant dot. And as we gather in a 
tense little knot on the after-deck, 
straining our eyes, clawing tenta- 
tively for a peep through the binoc- 
ulars, the enemy monoplane sails 
serenely toward us, and the guns 
begin to go. From the men-of-war 
near by, from invisible batteries con- 
cealed ashore, the sharp cracks echo, 
and we watch the oncoming dot ten 
thousand feet above the sea. Tubby 
says ten thousand feet, and although 
86 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

I don't believe he knows anything 
about it, he has been in the Navy 
and possesses the prestige of the 
Senior Service. He certainly knows 
more about it than we do. 

And observe how greedily we make 
the most of this little bit of war which 
has come to us. Now he is right over 
us, sailing across a broad shield of 
speckless blue, and we see the small 
white plumes of shrapnel suddenly 
appear, above, below, and around 
him. He sails on. He must be 
doing seventy miles an hour. Some- 
body doubts this. We ignore him, 
and push the speed up to eighty 
miles. Say eighty miles an hour. 
Golly! That was a close one. A 
white plume appears right in front of 
him. He sails on. Evidently he 
has no bombs. Tubby says : " Tawbs 
don't carry no bombs." What a 
mine of information he is ! Again a 

87 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

hit, a palpable hit. But he sails on. 
There is something sublime about 
this. Of course he is a German and 
therefore damnable. But — but — 
well, he is damnably adventurous. I 
wonder what he is doing. Has he a 
sweetheart, a German Madchen? I 
am supposed to believe she would not 
have the wit to love him for this dare- 
devil eagle-swoop over Salonika. I 
don't think, however, that patri- 
otism compels me to hate that air- 
man up there. Crack-crack! go the 
guns. He sails on. He is, so far, 
supreme. A dim sporting instinct, 
which used to have free rein at school, 
shoots through my mind and I dis- 
cover in myself no passionate desire 
to see him hit. He himself seems to 
have no anxieties whatever. I recall 
a line from Shelley: 

He rides upon the platform of the wind, 
And laughs to hear the fireballs roar behind. 

88 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

Now he is over Ben Lomond and 
is turning toward Monastir, whence 
we suppose he has come. Other 
batteries behind the town welcome 
him and the Navy resigns itself, for 
once, to frustration. Crack after 
crack, plume after plume. Now he is 
behind a cloud, and our attention is 
taken up for a moment by the sight 
of our own machines manoeuvring 
for position in the offing. And the 
next time we see him he is coming 
down. Tubby says so. Personally, 
I imagined him to be going up; 
but I never contradict a navy man. 
Somebody else says he is hit. Our 
lieutenant, on the upper deck with 
the commander, looking through his 
prismatic glasses, says it looks like it. 
I glance at our group, all eyes raised 
to the sky, mouths open, emblems of 
receptive vacuity. 

Reluctantly we abandon our pre- 
89 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

cious "Tawb" to the inland ranges 
and return to the mundane life once 
more. Tubby walks to and fro, a 
short man of enormous size, dis- 
coursing of "Tawbs." I call him my 
mythological monster, for he has 
served in the " y Ercles" the " y Ecuba" 
the "You roper" the Endymion and 
the "Amfi-trite" When we go to sea, 
Tubby stands or sits by his gun and 
keeps a lookout for submarines. He 
is one of Hardy's Wessex yokels. 
When the war came, he was malting 
at Malmesbury, and doing a small 
delivery-wagon business for a local 
hardware store. He looks it. He 
could pose for John Bull, a beef- 
eating, ale-drinking, Saxon John 
Bull. Now he is also an expert on 
"Tawbs." What tales he will tell by 
the malt-house fires in the winters to 
come! Tales, perhaps, of "Tawbs !" 
And so, in idle talk and modest 
90 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

vigilance, the day wears on, until the 
sun is setting in turbulent reds and 
purples beyond the Vardar, and the 
peak of Olympos, showing for a brief 
moment above the billows of vapour, 
is flushed an exquisite pale rose colour. 
Lights begin to twinkle on the shore. 
Those on day work begin to appear 
after their wash, loafing about until 
dinner, smoking cigarettes, arguing 
after the foolish, dogmatic way of 
sailors, getting heated over nothing, 
condemning a nation in a thoughtless 
phrase. Some are writing home, for 
a mail goes soon. Some come into 
the machine-room for a drink of 
water, or for a chat. 

The Fourth Engineer, who had 
viewed the aeroplane dressed in blue 
serge trousers and an unbuttoned 
pajama jacket, now appears in his 
uniform, still a little drowsy after his 
day's sleep, but smiling in his pleas- 

9i 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

ant boyish way. Our conversation is 
not intellectual. We really have not 
much to say. It would not bear 
writing down. Nor would a comic 
paper take our jokes. Nevertheless, 
we talk and laugh and pass the time. 
For myself, I talk to everybody: I 
talk to the nigger firemen and the 
Chinese cook, to the dog and the cat, 
to the canary in my room and the 
parrot who blasphemes so bitterly 
on the fore-deck. 

So I keep in practice. For some 
day we shall have Peace, and we shall 
go home, over the well-remembered 
road to Malta and Gib, and over the 
mountainous western-ocean swell 
that is for ever charging across the 
Bay. Some day this will happen, 
and we shall speak the Tuskar once 
again, tie up in the old dock, and 
step ashore. And we shall take our 
way, some of us, through the quiet 
92 



A SIX-HOUR SHIFT 

countryside, where friends await us, 
friends who will bid us tarry awhile 
and tell them our tales of foreign 
parts, as mariners have done and 
always will do, while ships come 
home from sea. 



THE END 



93 



THIS VOLUME WAS PRINTED BY 
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS 
GARDEN CITY, LONG ISLAND, N. Y. 
THE PRINTING WAS COMPLETED 
IN THE MONTH OF SEPTEMBER 
MCMXX 




